Q&A
Funding challenges for cultural alliances and networks
1:37:58
·
156 sec
Panelists discuss the unique funding challenges faced by cultural alliances and networks, highlighting the difficulties in fitting into existing funding guidelines and the need for more support for these types of organizations.
- Beth Allen emphasizes the lack of funding opportunities for organizations that don't fit neatly into existing categories
- Panelists call for more funding and understanding of how networks function to further equity
- The discussion touches on the challenges of developing new initiatives with limited resources
Beth Allen
1:37:58
To piggyback on that.
1:38:00
I think, you know, one, I think I can say on behalf of all of us, more funding for for organizations like ours, and because we don't fit neatly in any fill and drop guidelines, any government guidelines, any small business guidelines.
1:38:16
We are a relatively new organization.
1:38:18
I am largely funded by our member organizations.
1:38:21
We charge fees.
1:38:23
And because we don't really qualify for for we qualify for very little else.
1:38:28
We developed a a new pilot initiative last year called Arts Month May designed to promote the work of our our our organizations in May as part of that, we built out a platform so that we could do, like, neighborhood guides so that small we could have small business listings that we could put in their information about other cultural organizations, other social service organizations, to really try and bring a full community together.
1:38:56
I did it on $35100, not including my salary.
1:39:01
And, you know, this is an initiative where we would love to invest in a really robust website would love to invest in staff to actually work very closely with the bids, with, you know, to ensure that it is really robust in terms of our our cultural partner, our partners, outside the cultural community, but we simply don't have the funding.
1:39:24
I'm a single person staff.
1:39:25
This was frankly, like, something that I was like, we just need to do it as a proof of concept.
1:39:33
But there's no logical place for me to get funded for that.
1:39:36
It's not because it's serving a general audience, because it's serving cultural organizations, and and small businesses, and not, you know, the community, it's self directly.
1:39:50
It just doesn't fit into guidelines.
1:39:52
And that's true of most of what we do.
1:39:56
And I'm not seeing that change at a foundation at the, you know, at a philanthropy level.
1:40:04
We are also you know, we're grassroots.
1:40:06
We're here to be the voice of, you know, and think about things from the arts perspective.
1:40:12
I think often we're asked to fit into the the business perspective or the, you know, a very narrow con conception of community, whereas the arts are trying to broaden that and think about it differently.
1:40:28
And It's hard work, doesn't pay well.
Carlina Rivera
1:40:32
Ryan, did you wanna ask something about it?
Ryan Gilliam
1:40:34
I just wanted to ask to recognize that, actually, when we think about the cultural character of the neighborhood, we aren't just thinking about art artists and and cultural organizations.
